Friday, May 18, 2012

The first step into a larger universe

We started Narnia today. I didn't quite know if Meg was ready for a chapter book, but she likes picture books and is able to follow the story  of such classics as If You Give a Pig a Party and Fancy Nancy. She'll sit with them herself, identifying the pictures and (half the time) reciting the text for that page, so I thought it was worth trying, at least. I got out The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and started reading aloud.

We counted the children - Peter, Susan, Edmund, Lucy - on our fingers, and talked about their riding the train to the Professor's house. We talked about the owl sound Lucy heard and made owl noises ourselves. We talked about exploring big houses and what wardrobes and fauns are and examined the illustrations closely. We made it all the way to chapter two and started having tea with Mr. Tumnus before she got restless, so we put it away and went and had a glorious tea of our own, with a fried egg and croissants with honey, lemon curd, or Nutella. All in all, it was a highly successful introduction to Narnia. I'm so pleased I could just about cry.

I hadn't ever put this together before, but I realized Lucy's meal with Tumnus was especially notable because back home in England, she was under wartime rations! A cake with sugar on top would have been a particular treat for her. I'm so glad we're not rationed these days.

3 comments:

V-Dawg said...

I approve.
By the way, have you read Meg any Robert McCloskey books? Those were always some of my favorites when I was young.

Jonathan said...

When I was very young, my Dad would read the Narnia books and then re-tell me the stories in his own words. Sounds like you've discovered a similar method. I also approve. :-)

And that's a really good insight on the war rations, that had never occurred to me before....

Anonymous said...

That *is* an interesting thought. Come to think of it, Edmund's Turkish delight would've been quite a treat, too.

~Twynkletoes